Three Russian paramilitaries and two Central African police officers were killed Thursday by an explosive device in the north-west of the Central African Republic ravaged by civil war, government spokesman Ange Maxime Kazagui told AFP on Sunday.
"
Three Russian allies and two Central African police officers were killed, there are also wounded,
" Kazagui said.
A military convoy struck an explosive device on the side of the road between Berbérati and Bouar, more than 400 km from the capital, Bangui, according to UN sources.
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A Russian helicopter was sent to the site to repatriate the bodies of the victims and five wounded belonging to the Central African army and police, according to the same sources. Moscow, which exerts a great influence in this vast poor country and former French colony of Central Africa, maintains since 2018 a large contingent of "
instructors
" to train the Central African army. But in December, Russia urgently dispatched hundreds of paramilitaries to rescue the destitute army of President Faustin Archange Touadéra, threatened by rebellion. Bangui then spoke of
Russian
"
soldiers
" within the framework of a bilateral defense agreement, before Moscow corrects them by qualifying them as "
instructors
".
Many witnesses as well as NGOs assure that they were in fact fighters of the Russian private security group Wagner who actively participate, alongside Rwandan special forces and UN peacekeepers, in the fighting against the rebels, now dispersed in the countryside after threatening Bangui.
The UN for its part assured Friday that eleven people were killed in less than a month by mines in the Central African Republic, mainly in the north-west of the country, where some of the last strongholds of the rebel armed groups that controlled until now are located. 'in mid-January more than two thirds of the territory.
The presence of mines and explosive devices is a recent phenomenon in a country marked by years of armed conflict.